Carlos Rosales Mendoza

Carlos Rosales Mendoza (12 February 1963-27 December 2015) was the founder and leader of the La Familia Michoacana drug cartel of Michoacan, Mexico. Rosales was a friend of Osiel Cardenas Guillen, who was the leader of the Gulf Cartel, and they had a powerful alliance until the fall of La Familia Michoacana in 2010 and Rosales' assassination in 2015.

Biography
Carlos Rosales Mendoza was born on 12 February 1963 in the state of Guerrero, Mexico, and he founded La Familia Michoacana as a vigilante group that was opposed to narcotraffickers. However, he became one himself, taking part in the illegal drug trade at the head of a growing drug cartel. In 2000, he left the Milenio Cartel to lead LFM, and he allied with the Gulf Cartel and its Los Zetas offshoot in order to assassinate the Milenio Cartel's leadership in 2003. In 2004, he organized a massive armed assault on a high-security prison, freeing 25 prisoners. However, he spent the next decade in prison for the jailbreak, and Nazario Moreno Gonzalez usurped the gang from him in 2006. In 2014, he was released at the end of his ten-year sentence, and in December 2015 he was captured by Knights Templar Cartel member Ignacio Andrade Renteria with three others. The four men were tortured before being murdered, and their bodies were discovered at a parking lot in Gabriel Zamora, Michoacan on 28 December 2015.